This disclosure relates to surgical instruments having flexible portions that can be bent and locked into various orientations.
Surgical instruments with thin, elongated shafts for accessing various surgical sites through natural or surgical openings in the body are known. These surgical instruments may be provided with generally thin, elongated shafts in either straight or curved configurations.
Surgical instruments used to shave, cut, resect, abrade and/or remove tissue, bone and or other bodily materials are known. Such surgical instruments can include a cutting surface, such as a rotating blade, disposed on an elongated inner tube that is rotated within an elongated outer tube having a cutting window. The inner and outer tubes together form a surgical cutting blade. In general, the elongated outer tube includes a distal end defining an opening or cutting window that exposes the cutting surface of the inner tube (at the distal end of the inner tube) to tissue, bone and/or any other bodily materials. A powered handpiece is used to rotate the inner tube with respect to the outer tube while an outer tube hub (connected to the proximal end of the outer tube) is rigidly fixed to the handpiece and an inner tube hub (connected to the proximal end of the inner tube) is loosely held in place by the powered handpiece and can move axially.
In such surgical instruments, it is often useful, or even necessary, for a surgeon to be able to precisely orient a tip of the surgical cutting blade (defining the cutting surface within the cutting window) at a specific angle. Because of this requirement, it is known to provide kits having multiple surgical cutting blades having first ends angled to different fixed degrees. Thus, depending on the needs or requirements of the surgery, a surgeon can switch between multiple different surgical cutting blades multiple times during surgery so as to precisely orient the selected surgical cutting blade in the exact location he/she is trying to reach. However, providing kits having multiple surgical cutting blades having first ends angled to different fixed degrees can be expensive and, even with a variety of different angles, may result in the surgeon not having a particular desired configuration.
Locking flexible shaft devices are known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,483,562 discloses a surgical device having a flexible shaft portion made up of a plurality of alternating spacers and spheres. U.S. Pat. No. 4,483,562 discloses that tension on a centrally disposed tensioning wire can be adjusted to rigidify the shaft portion. However, the configuration illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,483,562 is not desirable in the context of some surgical instruments, such as microdebriders, which requires an inner hollow tube portion for removal of tissue, bone and/or any other bodily materials.